Quinn Fabray sat in Math class, furiously scribbling into her journal. Rachel Berry was at the desk in front of Quinn, with immaculate posture and her large brown eyes focused on the teacher at the front of the room. Rachel's arm shot up to answer a question, her chestnut hair swaying, and the sweet scent of strawberries filled Quinn's nose.
Since the start of sophomore year, Quinn had taken to journaling as an outlet. It helped her to release all those thoughts she used to keep locked away, without having to tell a single soul.
The focus of the majority of her thoughts? Rachel Berry.
Quinn had spent many days over the summer after Beth's birth trying to figure out who she was. She had changed so much since the start of the year that it was hard to wrap her head around. She'd matured, that was for sure, but who was she now?
Quinn knew she didn't want to go back to who she used to be; she was tired of being feared. Throughout the summer months, Rachel kept on waltzing into Quinn's head, apparently as annoying and inexorable in thoughts as in reality. When Quinn had come back to school that year, she had decided that she would treat Rachel differently and that she would stop insulting her for her own pleasure.
Unsurprisingly, the result of Quinn's magnanimity had been a tentative friendship. One of the best qualities about Rachel was that she was forgiving and so she had welcomed Quinn with open arms. They weren't best friends, or even close to that, but they were comfortable around each other. What did surprise Quinn, however, was the development of her feelings towards Rachel.
Something Quinn never would have admitted to last year was that she used to be extremely resentful of Rachel. Rachel seemed to have… everything.
Rachel had two loving parents, supportive and nonjudgmental, a vast talent that was sure to be her ticket out of Lima and an intelligence that led her to being the top of every class. Despite her quirks and her overbearing personality, there was no doubt that Rachel had an enviable charm to her.
And then there was the fact that Rachel was beautiful. Sure, her fashion sense could best be described as a mix between that of an elderly woman and a toddler, but it was undeniable that a glance from Rachel could transcend Quinn's hearts into flutters.
So when she would catch Finn lustfully gazing at Rachel when he thought Quinn wouldn't notice and when she noticed many members of the football team staring at Rachel, despite their actions towards her, Quinn's body would become wrought with jealousy. These factors had culminated until Quinn found that the only release was to bring pain to the girl who was the cause of her own.
But now, the jealousy appeared to have died away or at least softened, along with her heart. Quinn had accepted her life and she knew, deep down, that it wasn't Rachel's fault that she had used to cry into her pillow at night.
When she had overcome the jealousy, only her attraction had remained, and with each day that Quinn became closer to Rachel, her feelings grew even more, building until Quinn had to release these some how. That was how she'd started to journal. With her envy out of the way, Quinn could focus on the little quirks of Rachel that couldn't help but make her smile; her excitement each time she got a solo at Glee, her apparent lack of a filter in her brain, the way she waved her arms and muttered when she brainstormed, her garrulity, her soulfull brown eyes...
Quinn's head snapped up at the sound of the droning school bell. Shit. She'd spent the whole of Math writing and hadn't heard a single word Miss Grantham had said. She had a lot of catching up to do.
Quinn was about to pack away her things when Rachel stood in front of her, beaming down at her. Quinn got out of her seat and gave the brunette a questioning smile.
"Do you want to walk with me to Glee?" Rachel asked, holding her hand out to Quinn.
Quinn tried not to stare at her hand and felt dizziness take control of her. She wasn't sure if she'd be able to hold her own with her hand in Rachel's. Yet she couldn't deny how much her heart was flipping purely at the idea of holding the other girl's hand and eagerly packed away her things before grasping it. Quinn couldn't help but notice how at home Rachel's hand felt in hers.
Rachel led her through the aisle and out of the classroom, Quinn barely able to repress a grin when Rachel begun to swing their arms as they walked down the hallway.
The math class was almost completely empty when Stuart, a burly sophomore on the football squad, noticed Quinn Fabray's composition notebook on the floor by her desk. He bent down, picked it up and glanced around quickly before placing it into his bag and calmly walking out of the room.
***
Quinn was a flustered mess by the time she got to school the next day.
The previous evening, Quinn had spent hours scouring her room for her journal. She searched everywhere it viably could have been and then everywhere she knew it wouldn't be. Her heart had almost stopped beating when she remembered that the last time she had it was in math.
Quinn stepped into school the next morning and ran to her math classroom, searching every inch of it for her purple notebook. As she frantically looked around the classroom for the fifth time, she shook her head at her own stupidity for being so careless with it, as though it didn't enclose her most intimate secrets. Quinn threw her hands up into the air when she accepted that the notebook wasn't there and left, her heart pounding in a panicked rhythm.
She walked back to her locker, her forehead a little damp from a cool sweat, and pulled it open, almost jumping back when she saw her journal lying neatly upon a pile of her books. Affixed to it was a yellow post-it note that read:
'Found this in a classroom!
Ben (Janitor)'.
Quinn let out a breath she didn't know she'd been holding as she clutched her journal to her chest, immensely glad that the janitor had been the one to find it. She opened her backpack and placed the journal right at the bottom, vowing to never take it into school again.
***
When Quinn got home from school and checked her email, a new message awaited her. She glanced at the name of the sender and didn't recognise it but it doesn't seem to be spam. The message title read 'Little Secrets'. Curious, Quinn opened the email and her eyes darted over the message.
I know what your secret is. Come out with it now, before I do ;)
For a minute Quinn is lost in confusion before the realisation hits her like a hurricane. Her fingers grasped at the edge of her desk to stop herself from falling off her chair. Her mind was in a flurry, trying to calm down. This could mean anything. It could be a joke. How could anyone know? They can't mean what I think they mean; that's impossible.
Quinn sat back and took a deep breath, trying to think this through rationally. No one knew that she was a lesbian, not unless they could read her mind, because she hadn't told anyone about this.
Quinn took a momentary breath of relaxation before she remembered her notebook. "The janitor didn't find it!" Quinn thought, with a pang of horror. Someone else did, and that someone knows.
***
The next day the message kept on playing in Quinn's mind, over and over.
Quinn was sat back in her seat on the school bus, on the way back home when she felt a buzzing in her pocket. It was a call from an anonymous number. She yanked off her headphones and pressed the phone to her ear, struggling to hear above the thumping music the driver was blasting out of the speakers.
"Are you a lesbian?" the voice on the line asked, crisp and clear. It's as though Quinn could feel the colour draining from her face. Overwhelmed and in shock, Quinn quickly fumbled with the buttons and ended the phone call.
The world went gone silent. Quinn couldn't breathe and was breathing too fast simultaneously. The blood was pumping in her ears; her hand was gripping her phone tightly and was shaking against her thigh.
She recognised the voice, it belonged to a friend of Karofsky. Quinn pushed her back against her seat further and tried to calm her pulse but it was to no avail. Shock completely overtook every inch of her. Quinn realised she was still holding her phone and she threw it into the front pocket of her backpack, before clutching the bag to her chest.
Quinn didn't understand everything she was feeling. But she knew she was terrified.
Quinn flinched when she felt her bag vibrate against her forearm. Her hand rushed into the pocket and she stared at the screen. It was another unknown phone call. Quinn puts it back into her bag and let it ring.
Quinn was suffocating. Her mind was foggy. She wondered why the bus journey was taking so long. The world felt like a hallucination as Quinn finally stepped off the bus and into her house.
Quinn turned her key into the lock and was welcomed to an empty hallway. Quinn paced the floor in quick circles with her arms flailing for a minute as she tried to process her thoughts. She ran up the stairs. Quinn then began to panic in her room as she realised that she just needed to tell someone. She needed help; she was completely at a loss.
Quinn pulled her phone out of her bag to see that she had a missed call from the unknown number. She threw it to the floor in anger and frustration when it began to vibrate again in her hand. Quinn could feel the tears creeping up on her, begging her to let them fall.
She sat down onto her bed and took large, deep breaths to allow more air to fill her lungs. Her eyes wondered to her laptop and she lifted up the lid to check her email. A new email from the same sender sat at the top, daring her to open it.
Quinn's hazel eyes skimmed over the message and this time, the words were clearer. They spelled out exactly what she is and they pressure her to tell, they want to scare her into submission. She could feel the words pressing onto her shoulders like a pair of heavy hands and finally, Quinn let her emotions spill out. She fell back onto her bed and brought her knees to her chest as the tears streamed silently down her face.
***
The voice was constantly in her ear; torturing her and making her feel like there's always someone watching. Fear had been painted onto her body, clinging to her like a skin, an unwelcome guest. Quinn can't take this relentless paranoia that has rendered her weak and helpless. The voice is suffocating her and Quinn knows that this is exactly what it wants.
Quinn moved forward in her chair so her elbows could rest on her desk. She scanned the classroom but found no comfort in the faces around her. Quinn swallowed the stone in her throat when the realisation set in; she has no one to turn to, she has no one to tell.